EMERGENCY MAYHEM on Nintendo Wii

The city’s on fire and there are monkeys everywhere - it’s bedlam in Codemasters’ Emergency Mayhem.

Duck for cover as Codemasters puts players in charge of the emergency services in the most accident-prone city of all time! Set to put the urgency into emergency, Codemasters today announced Emergency Mayhem exclusively for Wii.

Coming Q2 2008, Emergency Mayhem puts the player at the helm of the three emergency services in a frantic race against time to hold together Crisis City, a mad metropolis falling apart at the seams.

Combining chaotic driving sequences with arcade mini-games, you’ll be in stitches controlling the frenzied police, fire service or paramedics as they dash around the city from one emergency situation to the next. With over 30 missions, it’s a non-stop time crisis where you’ll be rescuing people from burning buildings, defusing bombs and more. However, in this city, the emergencies are of a decidedly slapstick nature; crazy situations will have you hurling bananas at out-of-control monkeys, using a trampoline to bounce escaping prisoners back into custody and herding penguins to safety with hilarious consequences.

In a city where there’s always an urgent situation calling out for your attention, even those mischievous monkeys will get in your way In Emergency Mayhem time is your enemy, relentlessly counting down as you take charge of a fire truck, ambulance, or police car to speed through the city’s eight different districts to the next emergency. Have you got the nerves necessary to beat the clock and save the city? Find shortcuts to get there on time and save the day.

When you reach the scene of the emergency play switches to one of over 30 mini-games which take unique advantage of the Wii Remote to solve crazy crises. Using the Wii Remote, you’ll have to pump to practice CPR, point it to direct water from a powerful hose, mimic a wrench to bring bursting water-hydrants under control and aim it to fire bananas into on-the-rampage monkeys!

Get ready to put down those monkeys and put on the uniform in Q2 2008 when Codemasters launches Emergency Mayhem to the sound of sirens for Wii. If in urgent need of emergency assistance please visit www.codemasters.com/emergency for more information.

Codemasters launch first race driver grame GRID

A new world of motorsport is brought to life as Codemasters reveals the first gameplay video for Race Driver - GRID the video is now showing online at www.racedrivergrid.com.

Featuring aggressive wheel-to-wheel racing, spectacular crashes and a taster of the jaw-dropping damage engine, the unmissable trailer showcases Race Driver - GRID as the game that will make racing exciting again. With footage captured from the dramatic in-car view and powerful replay camera, the stunning new video shows the game’s broad range of race events, breath-taking cars and striking locations.

In Europe, touring cars jostle for position at Spa, the Porsche 911 GT3 RSR races in the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours race at dusk and the Aston Martin DBR9 charges around the historic city-centre of Milan.

In Japan, gamers catch their first glimpse of Race Driver - GRID’s open-wheel racing series as Formula 3 cars battle around the new Otakuma circuit. At Yokohama docks, the Nissan Silvia and Subaru Impreza demonstrate the awesome exhilaration of drift and night-racing is revealed as the RE Amemiya RX-7 takes on the neon-lit streets of Shibuya in Tokyo.

Finally in the United States, the Dodge Viper roars through the iconic streets of San Francisco, Plymouth Barracudas and Chevrolet Camaros battle for supremacy in Washington and Jupiter Eagleray Mk5s smash their way through the chaos and carnage of the destruction derby in Detroit.

From its huge, challenging career mode to thrilling, incident-packed online races featuring up to 12 players, Race Driver: GRID will deliver an unparalleled competitive experience when it launches early summer for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system, Games for Windows, and Nintendo DS.

Action PC puzzle game A-B-O-O now available + demo download

Fireglow Games announced today that the action puzzle game "A-B-O-O" is available for sale.

Leading video game publisher, Fireglow Games™, today announced that the action puzzle game "A-B-O-O" is available for sale.

You can download a one hour demo (11.4mb) of "A-B-O-O" or buy it here.

About "A -B-O-O"

"Plumeboom" is a great traveler, and he has many friends in numerous fabulous worlds. Country of Aboo is one of such worlds. It is settled by hard-working wormlings, who day after day quarry Magic Crystals that may be converted into any possible item! They've recently faced a real disaster. The two evils, Crowbeak the wizard and the mad scientist Cornix, that had expelled from Orniland, got to know about the Magic Crystals and decided to grab these from the defenseless wormlings, in order to create the Weapon of Darkness. The evils' forces are stronger, but our kind friend Plumeboom is assisting settlers of Aboo. The Magic Crystals shouldn't fall into the evil claws.

• Match 3 puzzle style.
• Captivating creatures.

CrossOver Games extends Mac Windows game connection

CodeWeavers has officially launched CrossOver Games, a new version of their virtualization technology for Intel-based Macs that enables them to run Windows games without actually having Windows installed. CrossOver Games costs $39.95.

Like CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Mac software, CrossOver Games leverages work done on Wine—an open source project with roots in Linux developed to act as a compatibility layer for Windows applications, to help Windows apps run without having Windows installed.

What makes CrossOver Games different is that it’s been especially optimized to help Windows games run on Mac OS X without requiring Windows; the “regular” CrossOver product is instead aimed at Mac users who want to run general Windows applications.

CodeWeavers’ official list of supported games includes several titles that actually have official Macintosh versions, including World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Civilization IV and Prey. Other titles include Guild Wars and games that are distributed using Valve Software’s Steam service, including Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counterstrike, Counterstrike: Source and others. CodeWeavers has posted a compatibility center to its Web site for more details.

Source: MacWorld

Dreamfall Now An Xbox Original

This week's addition to the Xbox Originals library is an interesting choice: Dreamfall, Funcom's sequel to the much-beloved adventure game The Longest Journey.

Although the adventure gaming community has much affection for The Longest Journey, Dreamfall's blend of classic adventure game mechanics with action elements didn't really resonate with the Xbox crowd when it was released in 2006.
Its story and characters are simply superb, but Dreamfall does suffer from a bit of a split personality. It still has the puzzle elements of a classic adventure game, but tries to update the genre by throwing in combat and stealth sequences that never feel quite right.

About a year ago, Funcom announced that it would be creating episodic content for the game in the form of Dreamfall Chapters, though that never seems to have come to fruition. It's probably too much to hope that we might see some new content appear on the Marketplace in the future, but my fingers are crossed, anyway.

Dreamfall is certainly not without its flaws, but don't let that dissuade you from giving it a try, especially if you enjoyed its fellow Original, Indigo Prophecy, which similarly blurs the line between adventure and action games. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey will cost you 1200 Microsoft points ($15) to download.

Image courtesy Funcom.

Source: W.I.R.E.D.

Microsoft Cracks Down On 'Dirty XBox 360 Cheaters'

Microsoft is making good on a promise it made last October to make "bad things happen" to anyone caught tampering with their Gamerscore or Achievements, and the plan includes a bit of public humiliation.

The slap from Microsoft starts by resetting the offender's Gamerscore to zero, and rendering them unable to re-earn any previously obtained Achievements. So no replays of King Kong or Gun for a quick 1000 point boost.

An appropriate punishment for the crime, but just to make sure everyone knows why your Gamerscore is suddenly so low, your GamerTag will also clearly label you as a 'dirty cheater'. (Apologies that this representative sample of a cheater's GamerTag is, ironically, not clear at all.)

Smacking down people who are unfairly tweaking their Gamerscores is all well and good, so long as only guilty people get punished. Microsoft says it uses "specific and automated" criteria to determine who's fudging the numbers, and says that anyone earning Achievements the old-fashioned way will be completely unaffected.

Microsoft is also using a very specific definition for cheating, only targeting those players who "gain achievements through avoiding game play and the use of external tools" and will only wipe the Gamerscores of players who meet their 100% of their "cheater" criteria.

There's no way to appeal a Gamerscore correction or to remove the "cheater" label, so here's hoping that criteria is extensive and leaves no room for reasonable doubt.

Source: W.I.R.E.D.

World First Wii Freeloader Review - Over 22 games tried and tested

Now the incredibly popular and anticipated Super Smash Bros Brawl is at best a 3 month delay between Japan release and the Australian release. We PAL gamers are again left in the lurch. That is, until now, with the recent release of the Wii Freeloader, a device that will unlock your Wii to the world of games that are cheaper, uncensored and not delayed.

Owners of this generations other consoles will be well aware that their consoles are region free, Nintendo’s own DS and the Sony PSP also employ no region mechanism. Only the Wii has such a prehistoric, unnecessary feature included. Thankfully, the Freeloader has hit and, like it’s GameCube brother, promises to open your Wii to the world - and it does.

So what did we test?

• Super Smash Bros Brawl (US & JP) - Booted fine after following alternative method
Note: Did not boot with system with modchip

• No More Heroes (US) - Booted and plays
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (US) - Booted and plays
• Super Mario Galaxy (US) - Booted and plays
• Super Paper Mario (US) - Booted and plays
• Trauma Centre Second Opinion (US) - Booted and plays
• Ghost Squad (US) - Booted and plays
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (US) - Booted and plays
• Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (US) - Booted and plays
• Zack and Wiki: Quest Barbaro's Treasure (US) - Booted and plays
• Wario Ware Smooth Moves (US) - Booted and plays
• Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (US) - Booted and plays
• Nitrobike (US) - Booted and plays
• Trauma Center: New Blood (US) - Booted and plays

We also had a handful of GameCube games on hand to test with varied results. While the box of the Freeloader never actually mentions GameCube compatibility it does work in limited cases. Please note that we had the console set to 60 Hz which is what a NTSC GameCube or Wii in GameCube mode would have to put out.

• Timesplitters 3: Future Perfect (US) - Booted and works
• Resident Evil 4 (US) -Booted and plays
  

Sadly, that’s all the games we had on hand that worked, other games we tested included (all US versions) did not load...

• Alien Hominid
  
• Battalion Wars 
  
• Chibi Robo
  
• Geist (loads but crashes on loading screen)
  
• Killer 7
  
• Viewtiful Joe 2
  
• Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble
  

Read the full post on Vooks here...

Web hoax - Nintendo Wii update trashes Freeloader

Reported yesterday on some games sites this UNTRUE report...

Nintendo released a second update for the Nintendo Wii (America only) and it seems that this update voids the Freeloader - just after a week of it being released!

The update Nintendo sent out on Friday in Europe DOES NOT block the Freeloader, but I would recommend NOT to update you Wii just yet.

It's also invertible that this update will be on copies of Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit. This also means it’s either ‘Brawl or Wii Ware for most of you. If this update hits Europe, we’ll let you know.

I'll keep you posted on the latest news on Nintendo update.

Welcome to Zombie BBQ for Nintendo DS

Once upon a time there was a fantastic world where fairy tale creatures dwelt and all was peace and harmony… till the zombies came to eat out their brains! Welcome to Zombie BBQ for Nintendo DS!

Our story begins with the invasion of this fairy tale land by hordes of ravenous zombies. And they won’t stop at anything: from the succulent legs of ham of the Three Little Pigs to the sawdust brain of Pinnochio, they are all tasty morsels for the living dead.

Grotesque aberrations plague the enchanted forests. Prince Charmings wake up Sleeping Beauties with a real love bites and ferocious wolves die when they attack abandoned little girls. Only one heroine can stop this babbling army. Her name is Red, Little Red Riding Hood, and now she’s armed and dangerous!

Zombie BBQ is a really fun shooter for Nintendo DS, where you have to move forward by shooting down every living (or dying) creature in your path! Use the great arsenal of weapons at your disposal to do away with the savage hoards of zombies.

Shoot, blast, massacre, bombard and burn your enemies to the bone with a simple touch of your stylus on the console screen. Can you save fairy tale land or will you let its creatures live an unhappy-ever-after-life?

The story begins in October!

Two New Gears of War 2 Videos Available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace

Epic Games and Microsoft Game Studios Offer Fans a Front Row Seat at GDC with Two New "Gears of War 2" Videos, Now Available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace

Go behind the scenes and on stage with Epic Games as they show off "Gears of War 2" and the updated Unreal Engine 3 at the 2008 Game Developers Conference

Gamers can see what it takes to prepare for a second “emergence” with two brand new videos now available for free on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

In the videos, Epic Games President Mike Capps and Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski reveal the nerves and excitement involved in making a major game announcement, and provide backstage messages to fans before and after the official reveal of “Gears of War 2” at the Game Developers Conference earlier this month.

Additionally, the GDC Unreal Engine 3 technology demo video is now available, which shows off the impressive features of the updated Unreal Engine 3 via an on-stage demonstration during the Microsoft keynote at GDC by Epic Games CEO and Technical Director Tim Sweeney.

“Gears of War 2” is the highly anticipated follow up to the best-selling Xbox 360 exclusive “Gears of War,” and will be available this November from acclaimed developer Epic Games.

Stay tuned for further announcements on “Gears of War 2” in the coming months, and remember – the only good Locust is a dead Locust.